guidance was below expectations due to soft sales in china. >>> speaking of china, apple will soon be able to sell his newest version of the iphone there. >>> as for the economy, consumer spending fell slightly last month due to disruptions from >>> welcome back to "hardball." republicans have spent the past three weeks at least doing an elaborate and very public autopsy on the 2012 election. asking what went wrong. good question. like democrats before them after losing an election, they're focusing on the usual suspects, we didn't have the right candidate, didn't get our message out, didn't get our voters out. when you lose the popular vote of five or six elections, you have to consider the voters just didn't reject your messenger, they rejected perhaps your message. we have two strategists back with us. one democrat steve mcmahon and republican rick tyler. rick, you first because you guys lost, and i don't mind saying this because i'm heartened by this. i didn't know it was going to happen. i thought the first debate, as i said clearly on the air -- the president said i was having a stro